The present invention relates to a device and technique for separating the juice of a juicy fruit, such as a citrus fruit from the rest of the fruit.
A variety of devices are available or have been proposed for extracting juice from a juicy fruit, such as a citrus fruit, primarily oranges and grapefruits. For ease of presentation, the term citrus fruit will be primarily used in the description to cover any suitable substantially spherical juicy fruit. These can be roughly divided into industrial techniques used by large producers of citrus juice and techniques for use near the point of consumption, such as for home use or for use by a street vendor.
The industrial techniques operate primarily by crushing the citrus fruit and then filtering to remove the remnants of the peel, the pits and skin. The industrial juice extracting techniques are not of concern for purposes of the present invention.
The most common point of consumption techniques primarily require the citrus fruit to be first washed and then sliced in two. Each half is then mounted, typically sequentially, on a special device which facilitate the pressing of the citrus fruit so as to extract the juice from the rest of the fruit. The extracted juice is caught in a special container from which the juice is poured into a glass from which the consumer drinks.
These techniques suffer from a number of disadvantages. First, because the extracted juice can, and often does, come in contact with the outside surface of the peel, it is necessary to wash the fruit before extracting the juice to avoid contaminating the juice with dirt, chemical sprays, preservative coating, and the like, which might be present on the peel. Second, the conventional techniques require the use of a container for catching the extracted juice as well as a glass into which the juice is finally poured. This calls for the washing and handling of two containers.
There is thus a widely recognized need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have, a point of consumption device for extracting juice from a citrus fruit, such as an orange or grapefruit, which would readily extract the juice, with virtually no pits, from the fruit without requiring the pre-washing of the fruit and without the need to use any vessels for either collecting the extracted juice or its drinking.